5 Best Free LLM APIs in 2026 (No Credit Card Required)

The Short List

1. Google Gemini 2.5 Flash — The All-Rounder

Provider: Google AI Studio · Context: 1,000,000 tokens · Rate: 10 RPM, 250 RPD

Google's flagship free model with a staggering 1 million token context window — enough to process entire codebases in a single prompt. Multimodal: understands text, images, audio, and video. Best all-rounder for serious work.

Key Highlights

• 1M context window
• Multimodal (text + image + audio + video)
• 10 RPM, 250 RPD
• Excellent for long documents and large codebases

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_GOOGLE_API_KEY"

Google requires account verification but no credit card. Get API key →

2. Groq Llama 3.3 70B — The Speed King

Provider: Groq · Context: 131,000 tokens · Rate: 30 RPM, 14,400 RPD

Groq's LPU inference delivers the fastest tokens-per-second among all free providers. Llama 3.3 70B is Meta's refined 70B model with strong reasoning and coding. Perfect when latency matters.

Key Highlights

• Fastest inference (Groq LPU)
• 131K context
• 30 RPM, 14,400 RPD
• No credit card required
• Great for chat and quick coding tasks

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_GROQ_API_KEY"

Get API key →

3. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — The Reasoner

Provider: NVIDIA NIM · Context: 262,000 tokens · Rate: Free tier

NVIDIA's own model with 262K context and strong reasoning capabilities. Free tier via NVIDIA NIM with solid rate limits. Great for technical reasoning, math, and coding.

Key Highlights

• 262K context window
• Strong reasoning and math
• OpenAI-compatible API
• Free tier with generous limits

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_NVIDIA_API_KEY"

Get API key →

4. Mistral Codestral — The Coder

Provider: Mistral AI · Context: 256,000 tokens · Rate: ~1 RPS, 500K TPM

Mistral's dedicated coding model, purpose-built for code generation, debugging, and refactoring. 256K context, no credit card required. The go-to choice for developers.

Key Highlights

• Purpose-built for coding
• 256K context
• No credit card required
• ~1 RPS, 500K TPM
• Supports FIM (fill-in-the-middle)

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.mistral.ai/v1"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_MISTRAL_API_KEY"

Get API key →

5. Cerebras GPT-OSS-120B — The Heavy Lifter

Provider: Cerebras · Context: 128,000 tokens · Rate: 30 RPM, 14,400 RPD, 1M TPD

Cerebras hosts this massive 120B parameter open-source model with blazing-fast inference. No credit card required, 30 RPM, best for heavy workloads with zero cost.

Key Highlights

• 120B parameters
• 128K context
• 30 RPM, 1M TPD
• No credit card required
• Open-source model, fully transparent

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.cerebras.ai/v1"
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_CEREBRAS_API_KEY"

Get API key →

How We Picked These 5

We maintain a directory of 138+ free LLM models from 18 providers. These 5 were selected based on:

• Context window — all above 128K, enough for real work
• Rate limits — practical for daily use (not 1 RPM)
• Provider reliability — from established companies with stable APIs
• No credit card — 3 of 5 don't even ask for one
• Use case coverage — coding, reasoning, chat, and long documents

How to Use These with Claude Code (cc)

Set two environment variables and you're done:

# Pick your model's config from above
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1"
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="your-api-key"

# Then run cc normally — it now uses the free backend
claude

For Cursor, OpenCode, and other tools, grab the one-click config from each model's detail page on freellm.net.